


Specific Heat

by Lafayette1777



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, because i needed some more of everyone's fav vegetarian in my life, just a little short thing, the nights are cold up in the mountains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-19
Updated: 2018-03-19
Packaged: 2019-04-04 16:25:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14024106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: It was true what they said—that no king of Wakanda had ever traversed the mountains to visit the Jabari.But a prince did. Once.





	Specific Heat

**Author's Note:**

> there's about ten million different fic angles to explore this movie from but these two are cute so we'll start there
> 
> thanks for reading!!

It was true what they said—that no king of Wakanda had ever traversed the mountains to visit the Jabari. 

But a prince did. Once.

There was a night spent in a world of humid furs, embers glowing against the dark. A world lit by glistening snow and the smile of a chief. He learned something—warmth means so much more when surrounded by stalwart cold.

“When I'm king,” T’Challa said. “I won't forget you.”

M’Baku’s hands are resting warmly in his cheeks. They are practically nose to nose; T’Challa closes his eyes. 

“You already have.”

 

 

But he doesn’t. Not quite. 

When M’Baku emerges from the crowd to challenge him for the throne, T’Challa has no need to swallow surprise. There’s none there. They will fight; M’Baku will yield. It’s exactly the kind of game they were meant to play, exactly the way these sorts of destinies are meant to arrive. Nothing decisive, ever. They will have to circle each other, always, neither ever willing to dish out the decisive blow and neither ever able to turn their head without fear of it. 

And M’Baku does yield. They breathe hard against each other, skin unfolding against skin. Sinew and bone coiling and uncoiling into new, jagged patterns. And for a moment T’Challa holds him close, as if trying to absorb some part of him. His strength, maybe. Or just the memory of that night, of lonesome warmth. 

The Jabari aren’t wrong; there’s beauty to be found in isolation. 

 

 

The stillness is what M’Baku will remember most. 

The forest, blanketed in snow. A world with the volume turned down, the muted hum of half-frozen water over icy-hard rock. And the unmoving body of a prince-turned-king, draped over the rocks. Broken, but still with something elegant about him. Cold to the touch. 

M’Baku knows that the world will keep turning if he leaves him here. The Jabari will endure, regardless. They always have. Wakanda’s fight has not been the Jabari’s for some time, it feels like. The world has been happily spinning along without them. That thought, these days, twists something in M’Baku’s gut it never used to.

He pulls T’Challa from the water—gently, the way he would handle a child—and carries him up the hill without looking back. 

 

 

There is something cruel, he thinks, in the idea that what remains of T’Challa’s life relies on the absence of warmth. M’Baku kneels beside him in his bed of ice, watches his empty face. At peace in a way M’Baku has only seen him once before. 

“You know,” M’Baku murmurs. “I could take everything from you.”

T’Challa doesn’t stir. 

“The Jabari have waited millennia for this moment.”

Not even a flicker. 

M’Baku waits to feel something. Power, perhaps. A satisfaction at being able to wield it, finally. But those are all sharp-edged; all that’s inside him now is something penetratingly soft. 

“But I won’t.” M’Baku stares, wills the man to move. “Because you were warm, once.”

Up here, it’s hard not to value warmth above all else. 

T’Challa twitches. 

 

 

In the end, M’Baku feels compelled by something outside of himself. It’s an unusual feeling for a chief, for a man whose identity has been defined by defiance for so long. He would like to believe, perhaps, that he does not know what compels him. But it’s a lie—that peculiar heat is magnetic. He’ll follow T’Challa into the fire, apparently. 

He leads the Jabari into battle. The Panther and the White Gorilla united. It feels more natural than it probably should. 

Afterwards, he joins the other chiefs as they relinquish the body of the foreigner to the depths of the sea. There is a confusing lack of ritual to this action, but something in T’Challa has become unquestionable since his resurrection. The foreigner has hardened him—not unrecognizably, but just enough to seal any cracks.

M’Baku would yield to him again, if given the choice. If just to feel the glide of skin against skin once more. 

 

 

As it happens, he doesn’t have to. 

It becomes a ritual of its own. A periodic trek into the mountains, alone. The Panther comes, and is met with soft furs, the dying coals of a late night fire, the pierce of sunlight on undisturbed snow. Wakanda changes, the world changes. But there are some things that remain unmoved. Immemorially warm. 

“You forgot about us,” M’Baku says. It’s T’Challa’s hands on _his_ cheeks, now, his breath close and soft. 

“But I remembered again,” he replies. 

The heat signature remains, M’Baku thinks. The whisper of a burn. 

“I knew you would,” M’Baku says. He didn’t, not really—the Jabari are used to being forgotten. 

M’Baku’s hand shakes—not a shiver, but rather an excess of momentum, of something kinetic and unbound. T’Challa seems to vibrate on the same frequency, filling the space between them. 

Then there’s no space between them at all; they burn together.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
